OPINION/COMMENTARY

Now Is Time to Bet on Environmental Good News

For several years now he has been releasing an annual Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. It's his own way of celebrating Earth Day. And sure enough, for several years now, the leading lights of the environmental movement have been pretending Hayward and his index don't exist. Why? Hayward is an optimist. His index of environmental indicators is a collection of good news. And, for the professional pessimists of the green movement, too much good news is bad news. In last year's index, for example, Hayward and his colleagues cheerfully noted that levels of ambient air pollution in the U.S. had dropped dramatically, beginning in 1976. By 2002, ozone was down 31 percent, sulfur dioxide 70 percent and carbon monoxide 75 percent. Lead, once one of the deadliest, scariest and most ubiquitous pollutants, had dropped 98 percent. U.S. water quality, though much more difficult to measure consistently over so large an area, has also shown steep improvement. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the percentage of the U.S. population served by community water systems with no reported violations of health-based standards has grown from just under 80 percent a decade ago to nearly 95 percent today. This year, when Hayward releases his new index, the EPA data will be even sunnier: U.S. air quality, measured in levels of particulates, is better than it has been since such measurements were first made....

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